Search results for: “throwback gadget”

  • Casio DW-100 – throwback gadget

    My story with the Casio DW-100 began in the school canteen. One of the people that I used to hang with as I ate my packed lunch was a guy called Neil. Neil was one of the better off people in my school, he had a maths tutor. His Mum ran a green grocers and we occasionally heard about giant spiders turning up in boxes of bananas that had been picked up from the wholesale market.

    The Chiba connection

    Neil’s Dad was a ships carpenter by trade who ended up working for Shell. He was assigned to different places and inspected tankers that were under construction or being repaired. Because of this, he worked away for most of the year. During the summer or Christmas Neil would get to visit his job in places like Nigeria, Singapore or Japan. He spent a good deal of time in Chiba, Japan as his Dad was inspecting ships being built at Mitsui Engineering and Shipbuilding.

    ASIAN BLOSSOM

    When you have a well paid parent who doesn’t see you very often and access to the latest greatest products, you end up the most well heeled kid on the block. At the time, a lot of the best Japanese products didn’t get as far as the UK. Neil had a better Walkman than anyone else and he had the Casio DW-100.

    dw100
    Casio DW-100

    After coming back from visiting the Far East Neil came a new Casio DW-1000.

    Why Casio?

    Casio watches had a battery that would usually last a couple of years, which was why they were holding their own against competitors like Commodore or Sekonda. Before the lithium ‘coat button’ batteries, watches had smaller ‘shirt button’ sized batteries that lasted 12 months if you were lucky. The smaller buttons also seemed to leak ruining the watch beyond repair.

    Back then our equivalent of Hodinkee magazine was the Argos catalogue. My local Rolex authorised dealer seemed like it was a space ship from another world. My Dad’s 1960s vintage Omega felt like adult unobtainium. Seiko and Citizen watches were things I aspired to have when got to hold down a job in the adult world of work that felt so far off at the time. It was the 1980s so even being able to work felt more hopeful than reality.

    They were also cheaper than the likes of Seiko or Citizen digital watches. It was fortunate to have a Casio Marlin W750; which was a step above most digital watches at the time with water resistance of 50 meters. This was the best Casio digital watch that was available at the time in Argos catalogue. This 50M water resistance capability was shown with a marlin fish on the front of it. Otherwise it looked like every other Casio watch. What that meant that it was able to survive getting washed or having a shower. This was important as my school was full of light-fingered pupils.

    The G-Shock before the G-Shock

    Neil’s Casio DW-100 caught the eye for a number of reasons:

    • It was an unusual combination of resin strap and metal case
    • The strap was beefier
    • The case was predominantly brushed finish rather than shiny and discernibly larger
    • It had a plastic bumper on the front to protect the easily scratched plastic glass
    • “Water Resist 200M” embossed on plastic bumper. Dive watch level water resistance seemed like an ability to blast off into space.
    • Staring at the grey glass a bit harder and you would see a stylised scuba diver where my own watch featured a marlin.

    Function-wise it was very similar to my own watch. The screen had the exact same three segments on the screen. There would be a half hour chime function, which was the soundtrack of my classroom in the same way that iPhone alerts are the soundtrack of the office today.

    While these watches were robust, they would soon resemble a hard-working Land Rover. The front bumper scarred and chewed up as if it was mauled by a lion. Many of them were probably prefectly useable up to the day that they were thrown away or put in a drawer. One of them featured in an advertising campaign that Casio ran in the US in 2019.

    The development of the G-Shock also implies that many of the drops that the DW-100 damaged it in a similar way to cheaper watches. The LCD screen would break and there wasn’t the kind of replacement services that we know have for broken smartphone screens.

    Cult item

    While the Casio DW-100 was not well known in the UK, they were sold in the US as well as Japan. in 1986, they were a key item in an episode of the TV show MacGyver. And have now been coveted by watch collectors and adult fans of the show.

    Epilogue

    I haven’t spoken to Neil in decades, we fell out of touch. He got sponsored for his first degree; did a doctorate after leaving the sponsor and has spent the rest of his career in the oil industry. The last I heard of him he was involved in oilfield maintenance and engineering in the Middle East.

    More retro gadget related content here.

  • Bush TR 82 – throwback gadget

    Whilst you might not know the Bush TR 82, if you were from western Europe you’ll recognise its style immediately.

    Post-war Britain

    In the post-war era Bush Radio Limited tried to fill consumers demands for entertainment.

    There were radios that would sit on a sideboard and would have the presence of a TV set. Many of these have fitted out with Bluetooth to create a better sounding sound system. It certainly sounds better than an Amazon Echo. My parents inherited one of these, a Bush VHT 61, which served them well for many years.

    There was also radiograms, which is were a cross between a sideboard and a hifi system.

    The secret of their warm sound was valve circuits. Before chips with millions of components, were transistors. And before transistors were delicate lightbulb-like valves.

    Bush TR 82
    Bush TR 82

    David Ogle’s iconic design

    Over time manufacturers like Bush managed to make valves small enough to make portable devices. In 1957 the Bush MB60 was launched. This was a portable valve radio designed by David Ogle of Ogle Design. The MB60 didn’t last as even minature valve radios were power hungry and delicate. But David Ogle’s case design lived on.

    TR 82

    Ogle’s product design was mated to a seven transistor circuit to create the TR 82.The TR 82 was big enough to have a decent sound and small enough to be portable. Alkaline batteries like Duracell were only starting to reach the market about the same same as the TR 82. So a high powered long lasting battery would be a 9 volt lantern style battery. This meant that you got months of use out of one battery, but each battery was expensive. (Similar batteries were still commonly used up until recently in the flashing lanterns used to mark road works currently in progress).

    The TR 82 received long wave and medium wave so didn’t need an external aerial. VHF or FM radio wasn’t popular yet. In common with cars from the 1950s the Bush TR 82 had chrome plated brightwork. This was around the front panel around the edge of the circular reception dial. Despite this ornamentation you ended up with a very intuitive radio design, with a simplicity that Dieter Rams would appreciate. There was a large tuning wheel on the front of the radio.

    On top, there were two rotating controls:

    • Volume
    • A combined tone and on / off switch

    Selection between medium wave and long wave reception was done with two large buttons.

    The handle ran the length of the case and swivelled at the points at which it was secured. This provided even easier access to the top controls of the radio.

    The rear cover was removed by a single central screw. This could be undone with a edge of a coin. Inside the case was a battery compartment at the bottom. The rest of the radio was held on a metal subframe. This rigidity was essential for the tuning mechanism to work seamlessly and for the speaker to provide a good sound.

    My personal memories of the TR 82

    My own personal memories of a well-used and obsolete Bush TR 82 stem from my time on the family farm in Ireland. The radio lived in the kitchen and provided news at lunch and dinner time. It was also turned on to listen to the latest livestock market prices. This would then affect if, or when livestock and wool were sent to market. It provided live music on a Saturday evening. In essence, it filled many of the tasks that an internet enabled PC would do – if my Uncle and Grandmother had been online.

    Radio was the primary media. Ireland had been an early adopter of radio, but a relative latecomer to television. So even into the early 1980s the radio had a pre-eminence in consumer behaviour that was only slowly eroded by the TV.

    Television was something only broadcast from after lunch until late evening, apart from the weekends. When the second TV channel launched it only during the evening. By comparison at the time radio broadcast from before 6am in the morning until shutdown just after midnight.

    TR 82 and the rise of Sony

    The timing of the Bush TR 82 was a high point. The same year Tokyo Tsuskin Kogyo launched the first pocket sized transistor radio – the TR-63. It was the first ‘Sony’ product to be sold in the US. Sony was originally a product line brand for their nascent transistor radio busness. The product was so successful that the founders changed their company name to Sony Corporation. This idea of portable pocket entertainment begat personal stereos, iPods and the smartphone. (You can find more on Sony here.)

    By comparison the TR 82 marked the point for Bush Radio as well. Bush Radio had been acquired by Rank in 1945. In 1962, the company was merged with Murphy Radio as Rank Bush Murphy. This was sold to Great Universal Stores in 1978. In 1986, the Bush name was sold to the Alba Group. In 2008 the former Alba Group sold the name for use outside Australasia on to Home Retail Group. Sainsburys acquired Home Retail Group in 2016.

    But the iconic Bush TR 82 shape lived on, in more modern, yet poorer quality replicas. Most noticeably the Bush TR 82 DAB which had digital radio, FM, medium wave and long wave. Unfortunately the modern radio didn’t feature the same quality of speaker or internal frame. This meant that the sound suffered from lower power and a muddy sound caused by vibrations in the case. A brief feature on the Bush TR82 by the BBC and the British Museum here.

  • Bose Wave Music System – throwback gadget

    It is a little disingenuous to call the Bose Wave Music System a throwback gadget, mainly because Bose still makes it. It would be reasonable to call it a design classic. There are benefits to picking up a 2006 model Bose Wave Music System, rather than paying the premium of a new device.

    BOSE Wave music system専用iPod接続キット

    Bose Wave System timeline

    The original Bose Wave System was launched back in 1984; this was back when Sony was king due to the Walkman, digital wasn’t really on the horizon with the Discman only launching same year. The Acoustic Wave 1 (AW1) was a new take on the boom box radio that was ubiquitous in households and workplaces at that time. The AW1 featured a cassette deck and a two band radio.

    Eight years later digital finally arrived when Bose switched out the cassette for a top-loading CD player instead.

    In 1993, the Bose Wave System shrank from about the size of a medium sized boom box to something about as tall as an iPod Classic but featured radio only and was called the Wave Radio.

    Five years later a slot loading CD player was integrated. In 2004, the CD player also accepted MP3 based discs and Boselink connectivity.

    Boselink

    Boselink is unique in consumer electronics in terms of the expandability it allows. It was originally designed as a communications protocol for multi-room sound systems, but is also useful for connecting modules that extend the functionality of the basic Bose Wave System. Compatible accessories include:

    • Multi-CD drive
    • Soundlink – playback of music which is streamed to the device over Bluetooth
    • DAB module – UK-only adapter allowing reception of digital radio as well as AM and FM signals

    Bose also offered an iPod kit, which charges your iPod Classic and plays back the music. There is a replacement remote for the Bose Wave Music System which integrates basic iPod playback controls.

    Vintage over new

    The key benefit of a vintage Bose Wave System over a new device is the display. New devices have a back lit LCD display which wash out and aren’t as legible as the vintage vacuum fluorescent displays.

    VFD

    Secondly, you still enjoy the ‘big box’ sound created by the diminutive size of the Bose Wave Music System. They use use a folded waveguide, which is a series of passages from the speaker driver to the speaker grill. This attempts to replicate sound from larger systems. Bose claims the waveguide “produces full, clear stereo sound from a small enclosure by guiding air through two 26” folded wave guides.” The design of the wave guides has changed minimally over the years.

    My casual listening at home is based on two systems. A 12 year old Apple iPod Hi-Fi A1121, which works as a centre speaker for my TV when I need it. It takes audio in via TOSLink and gives a better sound than most sound bars that I’ve listened to.

    I use a Bose Wave Music System of a similar age to the iPod Hi-Fi with the DAB module connected via BoseLink and iPod adaptor as my go to radio around the house. It is the default provider of background music and up to the minute news. It provides a better sound than most of its newer BlueTooth enabled competitors. It wins out over the Apple iPod Hi-Fi, because of its ability to play digital radio and hide out of the way on book shelf.

    I then use a dedicated hi-fi for serious music listening of CDs and vinyl records.

  • Sony Walkman WM-R202 – throwback gadget

    sony wmr202
    I got a Sony Walkman WM-R202 and loved it, though it was only for a short while. It was delicate and fragile, or I had a lemon; but it was the kind of device that stuck with me and made sense for me to profile as an iconic throwback gadget. Back when I started work I was obliged to do night classes in advanced chemistry. It was tough going (partly because I wasn’t that focused). I had a long commute home in a company minibus and my existing Walkman WM-24 whilst good had given up the ghost.  I decided to put what money I had towards a Sony Walkman WM-R202 that would help with my commute boredom and my night classes.

    Why that model:

    • It could record reasonably well which I convinced myself would be handy for lectures. It was not up to a Pro Walkman standard as the Dolby circuit fitted was for playback only. (I couldn’t afford the professional grade WM-D6C at the time and they weren’t the kind of device that you could easily fit in a pocket either. They were big and substantial.)
    • It had a good reputation for playback. Not only did it have Dolby B noise reduction and auto reverse on cassette playback, but it held the cassette really well due to its metal construction. I learned the benefits of good tape cassette fit in a rigid mechanism the hard way. I had got hold of a WM-36 which on paper looked better than my previous Walkman with Dolby B noise reduction and a graphic equaliser, but had to keep the door closed with a number of elastic bands. It was a sheep dressed up as a wolf and I struggled on with my original dying Walkman
    • Probably the biggest reason was that it intrigued me. It wasn’t much larger than an early iPod and was crafted with a jeweller’s precision. It was powered by a single AA battery or a NiCd battery about the size of a couple of sticks of chewing gum. It looked sexy as hell in in a brushed silver metal finish.

    Whilst the buttons on the device might seem busy in comparison to software driven smartphones it was a surprisingly well designed user experience. None of them caught on clothing, the main controls fell easily to hand and I can’t remember ever having to use the manual.

    What soon became apparent is that you needed to handle it very carefully to get cassettes in and out. I used to carefully tease the cassettes in and out. Despite my care, one day it stopped working.  Given that mine lasted about two weeks, I am guessing that mine was a lemon and that the build quality must have been generally high as you can still see them on eBay and Yahoo! Auctions in Japan.

    Since mine gave out well within a warranty period, I look it back to the shop and put the money towards a Sony D-250 Discman instead.

    Here’s a video in Japanese done by someone selling a vintage WM-R202 on Yahoo! Auctions which shows you all the features in more depth.

    SaveSave

  • Shareware: Throwback gadget

    Shareware -back before the internet became ubiquitous, software was distributed by bulletin boards. It was expensive to dial into a board, so magazines uses to have storage media pre-loaded with applications on the front of them.

    For much of the late 1990s and early 2000s my parents used to use MacFormat magazine CDs and floppy disks as coffee coasters. One disk may come with bloatware such as the installation software for AOL, Demon or Claranet. The other disk would be full of free or paid for software.

    The paid for software was often written by a single developer. It was a labour of love / cottage industry hybrid. Often the developers wrote the software to deal with a real need that they had, it was then passed on as they thought others would benefit as well.

    Open source software the way we understand it now was only in its infancy in terms of public awareness. Packaged software was big money. As recent as 2000, Microsoft Office for the Mac would have cost you £235. Quark Xpress – the Adobe Indesign of its day would have cost in the region of £700+ VAT.

    Into the gap sprung two types of software: freeware and shareware.

    Freeware was usually provided as is, there was little expectation of application support. It would become orphaned when the developer moved on to other things

    ChocoFlop Shareware Style

    Shareware usually had different mechanisms to allow you to try it, if you could see the benefit then you paid a fee. This unlocked new features, or got rid of nag screens (like the one from image editing app Chocoflop).

    In return you also got support if there was any problems with the app. Shareware hasn’t died out, but has become less visible in the world of app stores. One that I have been using on and off for over 20 years is GraphicConvertor by Lemke Software. It handles any kind of arcane graphic file you can throw at it and converts it into something useable.

    Kagi Software were one of the first people to provide programmers with a way of handling payments and software activation. Kagi provided an onscreen form to fill out, print, and mail along with their payment. it was pre-internet e-commerce.

    I can’t remember exactly what utility programme I first bought for my college PowerBook, but I do remember that I sent the printed form and cheque to a developer in Glasgow. I got a letter back with an activation code and a postcard (I’ve now lost) from the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

    Later on, Kagi were one of the first online payment processors.

    From the late 1990s FTP sites and the likes of download.com began to replace the magazine disk mount covers. Last year Kagi died, making life a little more difficult for the worldwide cottage industry of small software developers. it was inconvenient, but now with PayPal developers have an easy way to process payments and there are various key management options.